Voir Tahiti, premières photographies, 1859–1870
29 September 2026–31 January 2027
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris
This rare photographic collection explores French Polynesia’s earliest decade of photography and features works by naval officers Gustave Viaud and Paul Émile Miot.
In 2023, the museum acquired an exceptional collection containing some of the first photographs made in French Polynesia between 1859 and 1870. The complementary approaches of Viaud and Miot offer rare testimony to a territory that was still very little photographed at the time.
The exhibition brings together two viewpoints produced a decade apart: images by an unknown naval surgeon and by a photographer who was already recognised in his lifetime. Together, they offer an unprecedented photographic rediscovery.